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Sep 16, 2013

Hi everyone! Can you believe it's September already? Is it just me or did the summer go by way too fast? (I always say that!) Here in Maine the summer feels so short, so it's always a little sad when it's over -- although I think fall may be my favorite season!

So I have been a little MIA recently but it's only because I've been busy busy busy working on some things around this house of mine. For a little while it felt like I didn't even come up for air! But now things are finished (ish) and I can show you what I've been working on.

In my last post I gave you a sneak peek of my bedroom painting project. As I said then, we painted our bedroom right when we moved in, but the color was too dark and we just didn't like it. But we have a big bedroom, and we didn't really want to repaint it. But we got the opportunity, strangely enough, when our poor pup Colby had to have knee surgery. Because he couldn't do stairs -- and because he's spoiled that he sleeps in our bedroom with us -- we moved our bed to the office on the first floor while he was recovering.

While we were camping out on the first floor, I convinced the hubby that it was the perfect time to take a paint brush to our bedroom yet again We knew we wanted something neutral and light, so I grabbed a bazillion paint swatches and stuck them up on the wall. Um, there are a million light neutrals out there!

The color we finally chose was Gull by Martha Stewart. It's a creamy, off-white neutral with a hint of warmth. Since so much of our house is painted in cooler tones (which I love!), I wanted something a bit warmer for our bedroom.

It took me a little while to get this whole room painted, because I also had to paint the ceiling (we found some leftover paint in the basement from the old owners for the ceiling, but when I used it to patch a couple spots it was definitely not the same color, so I had to take care of that situation).

I felt a tiny bit silly painting a room we had painted less than three years ago, but I am SO happy with out it turned out! It is soooo much lighter and brighter in this room now!

It doesn't feel like a cave anymore, and that makes me really, really happy. I need a light and bright space to cheer me up when I'm doing things like putting the laundry away. :)

I've seen some bloggers describe this color as a light gray, but it definitely skews a bit yellow in our room. I don't mind it, though -- again, it's warm and cozy, which I think is just right for a bedroom.

This is all the bedding, curtains, etc. we already had, but I'd love to get something different. I'm over the green curtains and sheets! I'll keep you posted on what I end up with.

While we were improving this room, we also decided to install a ceiling fan in here. We have one in our office, where we'd been sleeping for the last few months, and we really liked how it helped keep us cool. We also had a desire to update the lighting in our bedroom since the existing ceiling light in there was definitely inadequate for lighting that big space. Here's a look at the light that was in there (with the old paint color):

We ended up buying this Harbor Breeze fan from Lowe's, mostly because of its low profile. Our ceilings are 7.5 feet tall, and the hubs is over 6 feet tall, so we needed something with a profile of less than 16 inches, or else the hubs would be bonking his head! This fan did the trick with a profile of about 14.5 inches, and it was quite affordable as well.

It was no picnic installing this fan. The hubs had to spend some time in the attic installing the proper ceiling supports. But now that it's up there, we're quite happy with it. It's not as quiet as the Hunter fan we have in our office, but it's just as cute (and that's what matters, right?)

We also installed this cool switch that allows us to control the light and the fan speed, and it also came with a remote, which is super sweet because we can turn the light off or change the fan speed from bed.

And as we've done in the other rooms we've painted, we switched out all the beige outlets for crisp white ones. The hubs even put in these fancy USB outlets on each side of the bed, so we can charge our phones with ease.

It's always incredible what some paint can do to change a room (oh, and some white bedding never hurts either!). The before:

And the airy after!

So do you think I'm ridiculous for painting my bedroom again, not even three years later? Or would you have done the same thing?